The beginning of the end begins before the end of the beginning ends. The in-between is where the story lies.
They had first met in a conference where he was telling his own story for the first time. He had done well for himself by the standards of a university professor. He had done well for himself telling stories of others. In a quest to define himself, he started looking to the lives of others. He asked everyone he met what they were like, and what had made them who they were. In time, he became almost addicted to an escapist tendency to hear from someone else his own life story.
He wanted a series of footsteps, a road-map, and directions at cross roads. He wanted to trace the steps of someone else. He had heard enough stories that were familiar and enough that were, for him, adventurous. While he kept his day job, he began recording stories of people so ordinary, that over time it became a brilliant collection that was too familiar for anyone.
He went on to become one of the most popular documentarians of the decade, only to see an eventual demise of his accidental career.
The beginnings were, as they always are, rather fortuitous. For the first time he had purpose in his life – a purpose that had taken over everything else. He traveled rather frequently spending less and less time in classrooms. The university was humored by the money he brought, also by the reputation capital he added. Travelling mostly with a small crew, he was unsurprisingly indifferent towards them. He ate alone, or with his characters as he called them.
In their stories they were characters. In his life-narrative, they were subjects. He never revealed this distinction to anyone. He studied them, took apart their words and pieced them back together so they would fit into his story. He did what anyone does when they hear another’s life story. Yet he felt an usurping guilt in doing so, as if he betrayed the reality these characters were cast in. But it was necessary. To tell their stories was not the purpose, it was a necessity in finding his own – an elemental necessity that gave rise to an elemental guilt.
He recorded and watched their stories as a method actor would read a script. He relived their experience as a method actor would act.
His guilt surfaced during all his conversations, and drowned only by their end. Once he figured that no one was as clueless about life as he was, it gave him power to subtly rebel against the grand design. His rejection of the guilt was his rebellion. In rare cases, when he found other lost souls, the compassion of companionship did the job. It remained nature’s curse on him – a guilt so deep that it troubled him to the core, touched him and left at its will. It remained nature’s curse on him – a power so subtly rooted in rebellion that touched him and left at its will. He would remain here for always – powerful and vulnerable at the same time. His life would be spent trying to resolve a duality.
Somewhere in the middle, he married one of his colleagues back at the university. He was introduced to M by some common acquaintances, while for the first time in his life he had a purpose. It was human intervention in an otherwise inhuman story. It was human error at its worst.
There must never be an intervention of human nature when a man is after something with everything he has, for the first time in his life. When a man is willingly consumed by one thing, to ask him to give a part of himself to another is erroneous. In time, she would be consumed by his consumption.
For the first time in his life he had a purpose. The purpose, in time, took over his marriage as well (his marriage, not theirs. She had almost nothing to do with it. She had merely gone along. He was driving it all along; and he was the one who drove it to its death).
His marriage was short-lived. After the first year, she constantly complained that she had become another stranger for him, that he was more interested in her stories than in her. She was right. There came a point where he felt there was nothing more left to know about her. He ran out of questions to ask her, she ran out of stories to tell him.
There fought each other so often that there was no time left to fight for the marriage. She didn’t see much to fight for once her first bout of depression was over. She went back to going along but furiously so. Like she had gone along with his dinner table conversations and early timid fights, she went along this time with him in fiercer battles. If, in his anger, he broke two things, she would break five. She screamed that she wasn’t afraid of him, and this was her way of proving it.
The periods in between were marked by an eerie silence. M had always been quite uncomfortable with silence. It often became impossible for her to even fall asleep when they weren’t talking. The rough slices of time when things were rather mundane, they could stand each other. These were the times she fell asleep next to him quietly as if she had finally found home. When they fought, she fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
It was important to M, the reflection of who she was in others, especially in him. It did not matter what that reflection was. She was just glad that he saw her. She was almost like a damaged child who needed human touch – it didn’t matter if it was a caress or thrashing. In that sense, she was probably the closest to normal and yet the farthest from it, as most of us are.
The times of peace would begin by soothing her after the previous war. It would increasingly become difficult for him to see her in times of peace. His attention would waver. Since all was well at home and with her, he would attend to his career beyond his profession. In time, it would become unbearable for her. She had tried being a friend to him, being intimate, being someone he could loose; but the only thing that worked was a war where he could fight her. She did what worked. She waged a war against him, whenever she saw he failed to see her for long enough.
This one day he had come home for lunch. She was always hungrier than she ever was. Food was not even on her mind.
Some trivial matter blew up into an outrage of things flying through the dining room into the kitchen (and back). It almost turned into a competition of who break the bigger thing, and who would throw it further. If you stood and watched the entire scene from beginning to end, you’d not know whether it was a scene cut from a frivolous comedy or a gut-wrenching tragedy.
More than a sense of security, there is power in possessions - in every object that belongs to someone. They understood that quite alright. To hold something in front of your face to protect yourself was one thing. You could also throw what you owned at someone. There was a possibility of both attack and defense. And more than that, there was a possibility of deterrence. Others would hesitate to throw something at you. That is where the true power rests.
There were no inhibitions in her that day. She carefully picked out things that belonged solely to him, and threw then right back at him. For her, it was no longer a competition. It was a matter of survival. It was a matter of her survival at his expense. She would have killed him if she weren’t terrified of his dead body. She did not mind the consequences for herself. The course of life had taken a curious turn for her. She could not imagine it becoming any worse. Of course, she was wrong.
